Being a high school teacher, I am always surrounded by teenagers. I know what they like, what they're into, and what's "cool." I've been a high school teacher since the ripe age of 23, so when I started this career, I had been out of high school for just a short five years, allowing me to really remember what it was like "back then," and make a lot of comparisons. I often think about how different teenagers' lives are from the life I led in the nineties. It's safe to say that my age group (I am currently 27) is probably the last generation to ever really know life without the internet, cellphones, and social media being a huge presence.
A number of my earliest memories involve the computer and large floppy disks- I used to play a game called "Sticky Bear" on my parents' old, old Macintosh computer in the downstairs office. My sister and I would spend hours playing word games, matching games, drawing games...it was awesome. We would use the banner program on Print Shop to print out "Happy Birthday" and "Welcome Home!" announcements on that noisy printer, tearing off the perforated border before we hung them up. We would pore over the borders and graphics to choose just the right ones to express our sentiments. At school, Oregon Trail days were some of the best days- I can recall counting down all week until we got into the computer lab, and got to stock our wagons, hunt buffalo, and avoid imminent death along the dusty path headed West.
As we got a little older, America Online soon became a part of our world. I remember sitting at the computer, waiting for our dial-up modem to loudly and slowly connect, anxiously hoping for the "you've got mail!" announcement. I loved it. I was a total internet nerd- getting into chat rooms and asking, A/S/L, talking to people all over the world, which, looking back, was totally inappropriate for my young self. But whatever, nothing bad every happened. That was the extent of it though- occasional chatting with strangers, possibly sending instant messages with my contacts of they were online. It didn't consume me, and it hadn't consumed the world, yet.
In junior high and high school, my friends and I all had pagers. Mine was a sky-blue Motorola model, and my pager code was "15." Yes, I had a pager code. My best friend Ryan would page me before he went to bed at night with "233," which was our code for BFF, and I think there were many occasions where a boy I was hanging out with would page me in the middle of the night, and I would sneak into the kitchen, grab the portable phone, and sneak back into bed. I can't imagine growing up without the thrill of coming home and asking my Mom if I had any messages- if "he" had called, if my girl friends had called and left details for their party on Friday. Friends who had "their own lines," were the coolest of the cool, and busy signals were the most annoying thing, ever. My late night talk buddies and I even had a system where one of us would page the other, and the other person would call up a business number and wait for the call waiting beep, so the ring wouldn't wake up sleeping parents at 1am. Yearbooks were a big deal- when you wrote your home number in someone's book you could have that anticipation for the entire summer that the cute boy from 5th period might call. There was no instant gratification, no text messaging, no social media. It was old fashioned, a "let's have an awkward conversation on the phone and get to know you better" kinda thing. It was three-way calling with your best friends, and making silly answering machine greetings with your family. It was writing numbers on hands in pens, rather than punching it into your address book. We didn't change our Myspace page to reflect our ever-changing teen identities, we didn't snap photos with our digital cameras and phones constantly. The internet held no importance in our lives. When we had to research something for school, we'd use real books, or maybe Encarta. When we had a crush, we'd have a friend call the boy on his house phone, telling him how we felt, while listening on the extension. We weren't up to the minute with Facebook updates, we didn't tweet, and we wrote real letters that we passed between classes.
I can't imagine growing up in a world where for many young people, the focus is not so much on life, but on the internet. Later on in college, sites like Friendster were popularized, but because digital cameras still weren't a big deal, social media didn't quite take off. We engaged in these things, but they didn't consume us. In fact, cell phones weren't a huge thing for us until about half way through college, and even then, texting wasn't hugely important or relied on. Although I am a huge proponent of social media sites- blogger and twitter namely, I am so happy those things weren't around as I was growing up and figuring out who I was. I loved that I was able to be a kid without a machine and the entire world at my fingertips twenty-four hours a day. Conversely, as an adult, I love it. I've met some amazing people through the online world, both from my livejournal experience dating back to the late nineties, and now, the blog world. It's amazing to meet others with similar interests, and it's comforting to hear "me toos" from hundreds of people when the going gets tough. But as a young kid, when you're building the foundation if who you are, and who you're going to be, I think it's important to find strength from yourself and in your "real life" world.
So with all of this said, what was your internet/social media experience growing up? How old are you, and when did you start using the internet? When did it take over a bigger part of your life, if ever? What are some of your earliest memories in regards to computers? I'm so curious to see if my experience is shared, or isolated. I look forward to reading what you have to say!
Love you all :)
